What Sal DiMasi and I have in common

I had a tumor removed from my tongue on May 11. About 40 minutes into the operation the surgeon came out of the operating room to tell my husband that they had found cancer and were going to “keep cutting until her margins are clear.” I left Mass General the next day with clear margins, a fair certainty there was no lymph node involvement, and a meeting set up with the tumor board.

I was cancer-free, but to minimize my chance of recurrence, it was decided that I would undergo 33 sessions of radiation. The day after we met with the tumor board, I opened up my Globe (still a subscriber) to read with a combination of shock, irony, and coincidence, that Sal DiMasi, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, had been diagnosed with the exact cancer as mine, while in federal prison.